Gas prices are creeping higher. That’ll mean ‘very unhappy people’ and unrest, Blackstone CEO says.
“We’re going to end up with a real shortage of energy. And when you have a shortage, it’s going to cost more. And it’s probably going to cost a lot more,” the private-equity billionaire told CNN International’s Richard Quest at a conference in Saudi Arabia.
“You’re going to get very unhappy people around the world in the emerging markets in particular but in the developed world,” Schwarzman said at the Future Investment Initiative. “What happens then, Richard, is you’ve got real unrest. This challenges the political system and it’s all utterly unnecessary.”
“If you try and raise money to drill holes, it’s almost impossible to get that money,” Schwarzman said, adding that this is happening on an “extremely wide-scale basis.”
Schwarzman called on governments to agree on the rules of the road so society can successfully get through the energy transition.
“There’s unanimity something should be done, but how you get from where we are today to a green world is utterly undefined,” he said.
‘Inflation is definitely more than transitory’
The energy crisis is amplifying inflationary pressures as the world economy recovers from Covid.
“Short-term policies related to environmentalism in terms of restricting supply of hydrocarbons has created energy inflation, and we’re going to be living with that for some time,” Fink said at the conference.
The energy crisis is one reason the BlackRock boss doesn’t think inflation is just a short-term problem, as the Federal Reserve and White House have argued much of this year.
“Inflation is definitely more than transitory,” Fink said. “We’re in a new regime.”
